India fuels career growth for expat auto CEOs

The expectations and challenges here are different and the rewards immense, they say.

GM India Chief Executive Officer Karl Slym terms his experience in India as incredible. While emerging markets have traditionally been recipients of the older cast-offs from the developed markets, in India it is completely different.

“We have to bring the very best and be the first to catch the interest of the Indian customer," he says.

That’s why expat CEOs of Indian automobile companies consider India a lucrative assignment and a step to move up the corporate ladder. Says Ford India President and Managing Director, Michael Boneham: "I would not want to be anywhere else in the world in terms of opportunities.”

Hiroshi Nakagawa, managing director of Toyota's Indian subsidiary, agrees. “Meeting the high expectations from customers and dealers is similar to the years of growth that resulted in motorisation in Japan, 40 years back. Most important, cars are not just a means of transportation or a status symbol in India. Here, cars bring families together. The joy of owning a car is very high in India, unlike many markets where it is just a necessity."

The sales growth rates are, of course, the biggest adrenaline driver for expats wanting to come to India. India is next only to China in terms of growth in sales of cars. While the Chinese market grew by 46 per cent in 2009-10, India showed a 26 per cent in domestic car sales.

Take Peter Kronschnabl, outgoing chief of German luxury car brand BMW, whose next assignment happens to be another BRIC nation, Russia. He was general manager, market development, at BMW's headquarters in Munich when the company first seriously thought of entering India. Kronschnabl, who had planned the car maker's forays into Poland and Hungary, was put in charge of Project India that started with a two-week, fact-finding tour of the country in September 2004.

After extensive research, he concluded that India did have a sizeable market for luxury cars. "I submitted a plan to become Number One in the luxury car segment in 2010. I was asked to execute it. We have done better than the plans. We did it in 2009," says Kronschnabl, adding that the Russia assignment is going to be a different game altogether. "BMW is already the number one luxury car brand in Russia. My task there is different. Staying Number One is perhaps more difficult."

So, what makes the India market unique? Toyota’s Nakagawa says, "It is not manufacture-driven, but people-driven."

Ford Motor Company would endorse this. It was one of the first Western carmakers that entered India, around 12 years earlier. It finally had to launch a mass-segment compact car, the Figo, this year. Ford had managed to sell only 30,500 cars in 2009 with the existing portfolio and was scampering for a larger market share in the over 15-million-unit passenger car market.

The company realised that owning a car in India was not just a matter of utility. Then, it had to give shape to the customer. The car would come later. The Figo customer was identified as ‘Sandeep’. He was 26-27 years young, upwardly mobile, an ambitious man who was perhaps recently married and lived with parents. His car had to reflect his ambitions to move up the corporate as well as the social ladder and also allow him to take his family or friends for a night out in the city. These were the functions the new small car was meant to perform

It seems to have worked: Boneham says they have 16,000 orders for the Figo in less than two months of its launch. Having worked in the UK, US, Australia and Thailand before coming to India, he feels the thrust on personal relationships is much more here. "The amount of time spent in connecting with people here is extremely important. India has got a heart," he says.